Characterized by or resembling dole (sorrow or grief); sorrowful, melancholy, mournful (archaic or dialectal).
From dole + -y (adjective suffix). An informal or dialectal diminutive-style adjective formation that appears in historical texts but lacks the formal status of 'doleful.'
The -y suffix is how English casually turns nouns into adjectives—'rain' becomes 'rainy,' 'risk' becomes 'risky'—but for emotions like 'dole,' we preferred the more formal 'doleful,' leaving 'doley' as a linguistic also-ran.
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